University of Wisconsin Professor Karma Chàvez: Police Are “Occupying Force”, Requesting No Interaction With Police “Reasonable”

Karma R. Chavezis an associate professor of “Rhetoric, Politics, and Culture” at the public University of Wisconsin – Madison. She works in the Department of Communication Arts and “is primarily informed by queer of color theory and women of color feminism.” She is also “interested in social movement building, activist rhetoric, and coalitional politics” and states “In 2013, I published my first book, Queer Migration Politics, which examines coalition building at the many intersections of queer and immigration politics in the contemporary United States.”

Her courses include:

CA 969 – Queer Theory

CA 667 – History of American Public Address: The Rhetoric of US Immigration and Naturalization

CA 610 – Special Topics – Queer Migrations

CA 610 – Special Topics – Rhetoric and Queer Theory

CA 610 – Special Topics – Rhetoric of Social Movement

CA 262 – Theory and Practice of Argumentation and Debate

CA 571 – Contemporary Rhetorical Theory

“Queer migrations”? The study of gay people moving from place to place? Those illegal immigrants who are gay? Gay people who support or oppose illegal immigration? It’s anyone’s guess, but we’d like to thank the taxpayers of Wisconsin for providing such groundbreaking information. According to 2014-2015 UW Redbook records, Chàvez was compensated $87,224 in salary as an associate professor, which is considerably more than the roughly$53,000the average American household takes home, so thank you Wisconsinites!

Regardless, let’s move on to a piece of her writing from January 2015 that SoCawlege recently discovered. In an open letter published on the Capital Times website, which is aprogressive Wisconsin based outlet, Chavez and a co-author namedSara L. McKinnon(another communication professor specializing in taxpayer-gouging studies) penned a Letter to the Editor titled “Sara L. McKinnon and Karma R. Chavez: Request for no police interaction is reasonable“.

What did these wonderful academics argue? That a previous open letter from the “Young Gifted and Black Coalition” requesting that police have no interaction with blacks is reasonable. McKinnon & Chavez start off the piece with this:

“Dear Editor: We write this as a white lesbian woman and a light-skinned queer Chicana in solidarity with the Young Gifted and Black Coalition. We’ve lived in Madison now for nearly five years and we have had NO interaction with the police. We haven’t done anything to make that happen. We simply live in a nice east side neighborhood, have good university jobs, are gender conforming, and have light skin. There are many neighborhoods in Madison where the police are a nonpresence. In those parts of town, the police are only reactive — they show up when called, and are never proactive — they don’t patrol the streets presuming the presence of suspicious or criminal behavior. In the neighborhood we live in, we are never surveilled, there are no patrols, and no checkpoints. It is as if there are no police.”

They go on to express their issue with how the Chief of Police handled the request:

“Because we have the privilege of no interaction with the police, we were surprised at Police Chief Mike Koval’s response to the Young Gifted and Black Coalition’s open letter, which, among other things, named its desire to have no interaction with the police. Koval framed this request as outlandish, unreasonable and downright impossible. But we have to wonder why, if we can live a police-free life, Koval imagines it as an impossibility for black people to have the same.”

In order for no one to have contact with police until they are called you would need to end all public patrols. What do all these leftists want? Police to sit around in a building all day waiting for a call? Do they realize that if police aren’t out on the streets emergency response times in certain areas, perhaps all areas, will be increased greatly?

They end their letter with the following sentences:

“It is not an unreasonable request because for many of us in this city, it is already the reality. We also call on other nonblack people in Madison to think about the privilege of living without an occupying force in your neighborhood. If you, like us, recognize that this is a privilege that all should enjoy, voice your solidarity with the Young Gifted and Black Coalition in their pursuit of self-determination.”

Police are “occupiers” now. This word, like so many others, has lost all meaning by misuse and overuse at the hands of the left.

Yesterday, Brian Sikma published a piece on Professor Karma Chavez atMediatrackers.org. It featured her various views on immigration. Sikma writes:

“In a 2012 essay, Chavez argued that academics and the media should work together to eliminate references to border security when discussing the southern border in the context of the immigration debate, and instead talk about “border militarization.” Chavez claims in her piece that, “President Reagan’s administration was most responsible for rolling out the immense infrastructure that would lead to the most drastic border militarization.” She further claimed that border security efforts use military tactics to control targeted populations along the border.

According to Chavez, the consequence of border security efforts to date has led to the rape of women, including rape perpetrated by U.S. border officials. She cites no proof of this shocking assertion, writing only that, “many migrant women have reported being raped under the conditions of militarization for reasons that would not exist if not for militarization.””

As a final note, it’s worth mentioning that Professor Chavez co-founded an organization called the “Queer Migration Research Network“, which is promoted by the University of Wisconsin with a link on theirwebsite. Important warnings for a speaking engagement are found at the bottom of the QMRN’s webpage:

Scent free?! We will leave you with a couple of her Rate My Professor reviews: